Being Social

Monday, March 12, 2012

We can not listen to Obama speak without hearing the terms "equality", "equitable", "fairness" and such from him multiple times. Does he use these terms in the way Americans use them or does he use them in the way he wants America to be?

Douglas Levene takes a look back at what happened in Cambodia under Communist leader Pol Pot. He makes the point that although some would like to label it “genocide”, it simply doesn’t fit the definition. Cambodia is 95% Khmer, and what happened was “Khmer on Khmer” violence. It wasn’t genocide:

Rather, what happened in Cambodia is what happened in the French Revolution, and in Stalin’s purges and mass collectivization campaigns, and in Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, only on a proportionately larger scale. It was mass murder in the name of equality. It wasn’t “genocide”; it was Communist utopianism carried to its logical extreme. The Khmer Rouge, who called themselves Maoists, believed that the most important social and political value was equality, and that in order to create their new, classless society in which everyone was equal, it was necessary to exterminate anyone who might be smarter, or better educated, or wealthier, or more talented than anyone else. Thus, they killed the educated, the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, and the rich: movie stars, pop singers, authors, urban residents, and workers for the former government; and anyone who protested—as well as the families of all the above. Towards the end, they also killed cadres who were thought to be a political threat. Whatever their crimes were, the Khmer Rouge do not seem to have been motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious hatred.

The standard leftist cause these days is “equality.” We’re seeing it play out right here in this country today, with the demonization of the rich, corporations and other capitalist entities. And while it is easy to attempt to wave away what happened in Cambodia as an extremist example, carried out by a splinter Communist group—in fact Stalin’s and Mao’s purges were driven by much the same goal. All were striving for a “communist utopia,” and they murdered extensively in its name. Certainly there were other reasons, such as Stalin’s paranoia, but the murder regime had already been established and was functioning when those victims were added to the collective total.
Given that, Levene wonders why the world insists then on claiming “genocide” as the reason for Cambodia’s Killing Fields:

However, I suspect that the most important reason for the usage worldwide is that many people in the international media, international agencies, and international NGOs (not to mention academia) are reluctant to face up to the crimes committed by Communism in the name of equality. To do so might call into question the weight attached by them to equality as the most important social value and undermine the multicultural faith that evil is predominantly the product of inequality, racism, ethnic hatred, or religious fanaticism. That cannot be permitted, so such crimes must be either ignored or mislabeled. And, of course, the remaining Communist regimes in the world are only too happy to cooperate in characterizing the killing fields as the products of irrational paranoia on the part of Pol Pot and his gang—rather than the perfectly rational result of the quest for perfect equality.

These horrors took place based on the supposedly noble attempt to impose equality of outcome rather than offer the truly noble equality of opportunity.

Historically America has embraced equality of opportunity. In recognizing American strength in equality Tocqueville also warned of the darkness of equality abused. It is a shame we have a president who does not heed Tocqueville's warning of the perils of equality.